Wall St. inches up as deals provide support for rally

By Leah Schnurr

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose slightly on Monday as acquisition activity gave support, but investors were hesitant to rush into the market with indexes hovering around record levels.

Deals, including Yahoo's $1.1 billion bid for Tumblr, indicate that companies continue to search for growth through acquisitions, a bullish sign for stocks. Yahoo was up 1.2 percent at $26.83.

The Dow industrials and the S&P 500 finished Friday at fresh record highs and the Nasdaq Composite is at its highest since late 2000. A light economic and earnings calendar could leave the market vulnerable for a pullback, but those have been shallow and short-lived as investors take any weakness as a new chance to increase long positions.

On Monday, the Dow climbed to an all-time intraday high at 15,391.84, while the S&P 500 edged up to a new intraday record high at 1,672.84. Both major indexes are up about 17 percent for the year so far.

Even so, investors have remained wary of becoming too enthusiastic, which has helped keep the rally from getting overdone, said Mark Lehmann, president of JMP Securities, an investment bank based in San Francisco.

"The more days we go up and the more people who are in disbelief that we go up every day, the better," Lehmann said. "This is the least well-regarded bull market I think we've seen in a very, very long time."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> edged up 14.44 points, or 0.09 percent, to 15,368.84. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 2.43 points, or 0.15 percent, to 1,669.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 1.33 points, or 0.04 percent, to 3,500.40.

Actavis rose 2.4 percent to $128.53 after the company said it will acquire Warner Chilcott Plc in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at $5 billion. Warner Chilcott gained 2.9 percent to $19.77.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold and Plains Exploration & Production said they would pay shareholders more in dividends if they approved Freeport's roughly $6 billion takeover offer for Plains. Plains shares jumped 7.3 percent to $48.85, while Freeport gained 0.7 percent to $32.90, reversing an earlier decline.

Websense Inc shares surged 28.6 percent to $24.73 after the company agreed to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners.

Shares of Tableau Software and Marketo continued to climb after both companies' shares began trading last Friday. Tableau gained 16.7 percent to $59.23, while Marketo jumped 12.3 percent to $25.95.

"That tells you investors are looking at new ideas, and dusting off some old ideas," Lehmann said. "People are looking for growth."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before Congress on Wednesday is seen by many as the highlight of the week for markets. The beginning of the end of the Fed's massive bond-buying program, which has given strong support to stock gains, might come sooner than many investors think if recent gains in the U.S. labor market hold.

The Fed will also release minutes from its most recent policy-setting meeting on Wednesday, which will be parsed for signs of the direction of monetary stimulus.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-little-changed-records-acquisitions-eyed-114451808.html

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USA Real Estate Holding Company&#39;s Corporate Update

20 May, 2013

LOS ANGELES, May 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ ? ;USA Real Estate Holding Company (PINKSHEETS: USTC)

USA Real Estate Holding is a publicly traded company on the Pink Sheet Exchange. USTC is located in Los Angeles, CA. It has been in business for over 4 years as a holding company. ; As a holding company, the main objective is to manage a controlling position in other companies by way of majority ownership through efficient policy-making. The company?s portfolio of successful brick and mortar business ;is abundant. The key components that are sought after in the business model are growth, revenue and innovative real estate property management and acquiring other profitable ventures. It could be inventory based distribution business and/or any other asset based solid business.

USTC seeks to update new and potential shareholders on the immediate future of the company. It is in the process of updating financial statements and business plans to be fully transparent and compliant while reporting to the SEC through OTC Disclosure and News Service.

Shareholders will always be included on all company updates. We look forward to creating partnerships and alliances that will highlight our comparative advantage in the industry.

For more information please visit: www.USArealEstateHolding.com

Safe Harbor Statement ;

Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The company cautions that these forward-looking statements are further qualified by other factors. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any statements in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Forward Looking Statement ;

Any statements made in this press release which are not historical facts contain certain forward-looking statements; as such term is defined in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995, concerning potential developments affecting the business, prospects, financial condition and other aspects of the company to which this release pertains. The actual results of the specific items described in this release, and the ;company?s operations ;generally, may differ materially from what is projected in such forward-looking statements. Although such statements are based upon the best judgments of management of the company as of the date of this release, significant deviations in magnitude, timing and other factors may result from business risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, the company?s dependence on third parties, general market and economic ;conditions, technical factors, the availability of outside capital, receipt of revenues and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the company. The company disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement. This press release shall not be deemed a general solicitation.

SOURCE USA Real Estate Holding Company

Source: http://latinbusinesstoday.com/2013/05/usa-real-estate-holding-companys-corporate-update/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=usa-real-estate-holding-companys-corporate-update

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Opera browser leaves beta, stable version now on Google Play

New WebKit-powered Opera 14 stable now available for Android

The Opera browser for Android has exited beta and arrived on the Google Play Store as a fully-fledged stable app. The mobile version of the long-running browser is based upon the WebKit rendering engine -- the same software used by the stock Android browser and (for the moment) Google Chrome.

But it's user-facing features rather than technical details that Opera's counting on to help it compete on Android. Speed Dial has long been part of the desktop Opera browser, allowing quick access to frequently visited bookmarks. The "Discover" tab provides a summary of news items. The "Off Road" mode uses data compression to make the most out of slow or expensive connections. And text reflow is included in the initial release, too.

Opera for Android is available now on Google Play at the Play Store link above. If you decide to take it for a spin, be sure to hit the comments and let us know what you think.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/-WFyjQ32Fls/story01.htm

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Kinks and curves at the nanoscale: New research shows 'perfect twin boundaries' are not so perfect

May 19, 2013 ? One of the basic principles of nanotechnology is that when you make things extremely small -- one nanometer is about five atoms wide, 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair -- they are going to become more perfect.

"Perfect in the sense that their arrangement of atoms in the real world will become more like an idealized model," says University of Vermont engineer Frederic Sansoz, "with smaller crystals -- in for example, gold or copper -- it's easier to have fewer defects in them."

And eliminating the defects at the interface separating two crystals, or grains, has been shown by nanotechnology experts to be a powerful strategy for making materials stronger, more easily molded, and less electrically resistant -- or a host of other qualities sought by designers and manufacturers.

Since 2004, when a seminal paper came out in Science, materials scientists have been excited about one special of arrangement of atoms in metals and other materials called a "coherent twin boundary" or CTB.

Based on theory and experiment, these coherent twin boundaries are often described as "perfect," appearing like a perfectly flat, one-atom-thick plane in computer models and electron microscope images.

Over the last decade, a body of literature has shown these coherent twin boundaries -- found at the nanoscale within the crystalline structure of common metals like gold, silver and copper -- are highly effective at making materials much stronger while maintaining their ability to undergo permanent change in shape without breaking and still allowing easy transmission of electrons -- an important fact for computer manufacturing and other electronics applications.

But new research now shows that coherent twin boundaries are not so perfect after all.

A team of scientists, including Sansoz, a professor in UVM's College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere, write in the May 19 edition of Nature Materials that coherent twin boundaries found in copper "are inherently defective."

With a high-resolution electron microscope, using a more powerful technique than has ever been used to examine these boundaries, they found tiny kink-like steps and curvatures in what had previously been observed as perfect.

Even more surprising, these kinks and other defects appear to be the cause of the coherent twin boundary's strength and other desirable qualities.

"Everything we have learned on these materials in the past 10 years will have to be revisited with this new information," Sansoz says

The experiment, led by Morris Wang at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, applied a newly developed mapping technique to study the crystal orientation of CTBs in so-called nanotwinned copper and "boom -- it revealed these defects," says Sansoz.

This real-world discovery conformed to earlier intriguing theoretical findings that Sansoz had been making with "atomistic simulations" on a computer. The lab results sent Sansoz back to his computer models where he introduced the newly discovered "kink" defects into his calculations. Using UVM's Vermont Advanced Computing Center, he theoretically confirmed that the kink defects observed by the Livermore team lead to "rather rich deformation processes at the atomic scale," he says, that do not exist with perfect twin boundaries.

With the computer model, "we found a series of completely new mechanisms," he says, for explaining why coherent twin boundaries simultaneously add strength and yet also allow stretching (what scientists call "tensile ductility") -- properties that are usually mutually exclusive in conventional materials.

"We had no idea such defects existed," says Sansoz. "So much for the perfect twin boundary. We now call them defective twin boundaries."

For several decades, scientists have looked for ways to shrink the size of individual crystalline grains within metals and other materials. Like a series of dykes or walls within the larger structure, the boundaries between grains can slow internal slip and help resist failure. Generally, the more of these boundaries -- the stronger the material.

Originally, scientists believed that coherent twin boundaries in materials were much more reliable and stable than conventional grain boundaries, which are incoherently full of defects. But the new research shows they could both contain similar types of defects despite very different boundary energies.

"Understanding these defective structures is the first step to take full use of these CTBs for strengthening and maintaining the ductility and electrical conductivity of many materials," Morris Wang said. "To understand the behavior and mechanisms of these defects will help our engineering design of these materials for high-strength applications."

For Sansoz, this discovery underlines a deep principle, "There are all manner of defects in nature," he says, "with nanotech, you are trying to control the way they are formed and dispersed in matter, and to understand their impact on properties. The point of this paper is that some defects make a material stronger."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/physics/~3/ip39viNNKhI/130519190420.htm

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Kerry challenges Congress on diplomats' security

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry challenged Congress on Monday to go beyond its investigations of embassy security and help ensure that U.S. embassies and consulates abroad have the resources they need for appropriate security. His comments come as the Republicans continue to press for answers about the Obama administration's handling of last year's deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

Speaking to State Department trainees at the Foreign Service Institute, Kerry said the administration would spare no expense or effort to protect American diplomats overseas. However, in a sign of frustration with congressional Republicans who have suggested the administration is trying to cover up alleged malfeasance related to the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, he said lawmakers must play a part in mitigating the risks that diplomats take.

"We need to hold all of our elected officials accountable for making these efforts a priority," he said. "And that includes the Congress. This is a Congress that reminds us all the time they that are a co-equal branch of the federal government. And they should, because they are. But that means Congress needs to play a role on the world stage as well; not just investigating, but leading."

Congress, Kerry said, must provide "the resources and the support and the investments that make the risks that we take today worthwhile."

His comments follow a similar call that President Barack Obama made last week when he complained that persistent Republican-led investigations into Benghazi were a "sideshow" and urged lawmakers to provide more money to strengthen security at U.S. diplomatic missions around the world. The State Department is seeking about $1.4 billion for increased security; the money would come primarily from funds that haven't been spent in Iraq.

Since the Benghazi attack, Democrats have complained that Republicans cut $300 million from the Obama administration's budget request of $2.6 billion for diplomatic and embassy security in 2012. Republicans have said such allegations are unfair.

Kerry said Monday the administration is fully committed to implementing, and expanding upon, the recommendations of an independent review board that investigated the Benghazi attack and sharply criticized the State Department for not providing adequate security at the missions. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack.

But Kerry pointed out that the risks to American officials abroad are not new and will not go away.

"The dangers of diplomacy are not unique to this moment in time: our diplomatic missions didn't become dangerous that night in Benghazi," he said, noting that most of the 244 diplomats honored on plaques at the State Department were killed in the line of duty long before Benghazi.

Kerry said the risks can never be eliminated, but they can and will be mitigated because America's national security interests demand diplomatic outreach even in the most dangerous places.

"If we are going to bring light to the world, we have to go where it is dark," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-challenges-congress-diplomats-security-161108158.html

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UK Sees Surge in Measles

More than a decade ago, British parents refused to give measles shots to at least a million children because of now discredited research that linked the vaccine to autism. Now, health officials are scrambling to catch up and stop a growing epidemic of the contagious disease.

This year, the U.K. has had more than 1,200 cases of measles, after a record number of nearly 2,000 cases last year. The country once recorded only several dozen cases every year. It now ranks second in Europe, behind only Romania.

Last month, emergency vaccination clinics were held every weekend in Wales, the epicenter of the outbreak. Immunization drives have also started elsewhere in the country, with officials aiming to reach 1 million children aged 10 to 16.

"This is the legacy of the Wakefield scare," said Dr. David Elliman, spokesman for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, referring to a paper published in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues that is widely rejected by scientists.

That work suggested a link between autism and the combined childhood vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, called the MMR. Several large scientific studies failed to find any connection, the theory was rejected by at least a dozen major U.K. medical groups and the paper was eventually retracted by the journal that published it.

Britain's top medical board stripped Wakefield of the right to practice medicine in the U.K., ruling that he and two of his colleagues showed a "callous disregard" for the children in the study, subjecting them to unnecessary, invasive tests. As part of his research, Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, paying them about 5 pounds each ($7.60), and later joked about the incident.

Still, MMR immunization rates plummeted across the U.K. as fearful parents abandoned the vaccine ? from rates over 90 percent to 54 percent. Wakefield has won support from parents suspicious of vaccines, including Hollywood celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, who has an autistic son.

Nearly 15 years later, the rumors about MMR are still having an impact. Now there's "this group of older children who have never been immunized who are a large pool of infections," Elliman said.

The majority of those getting sick in the U.K. ? including a significant number of older children and teens ? had never been vaccinated. Almost 20 of the more than 100 seriously ill children have been hospitalized and 15 have suffered complications including pneumonia and meningitis. One adult with measles has died, though it's unclear if it was the disease that killed him.

The first measles vaccines were introduced in the 1960s, which dramatically cut cases of the rash-causing illness. Since 2001, measles deaths have dropped by about 70 percent worldwide; Cambodia recently marked more than a year without a single case.

Globally, though, measles is still one of the leading causes of death in children under 5 and kills more than 150,000 people every year, mostly in developing countries. Measles is highly contagious and is spread by coughing, sneezing and close personal contact with infected people; symptoms include a fever, cough, and a rash on the face.

Across the U.K., about 90 percent of children under 5 are vaccinated against measles and have received the necessary two doses of the vaccine. But among children now aged 10 to 16, the vaccination rate is slightly below 50 percent in some regions.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/measles-surges-uk-years-vaccine-scare-19214476

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Dexter Season 8 Trailer: Released, AWESOME!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/dexter-season-8-trailer-released-awesome/

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